cybernetics

/si:`b*-net'iks/ The study of control and
communication in living and man-made systems.

The term was first proposed by Norbert Wiener in the book
referenced below. Originally, cybernetics drew upon
electrical engineering, mathematics, biology, neurophysiology,
anthropology, and psychology to study and describe actions,
feedback, and response in systems of all kinds. It aims to
understand the similarities and differences in internal
workings of organic and machine processes and, by formulating
abstract concepts common to all systems, to understand their
behaviour.

Modern "second-order cybernetics" places emphasis on how the
process of constructing models of the systems is influenced by
those very systems, hence an elegant definition - "applied
epistemology".